Drawing Power
by aMUSEment345
Summary: One shot. Post-ep 12X18, Hell's Kitchen. A despairing Reid isolates himself. But someone else won't have it.


Post-ep 12X18, _Hell's Kitchen_

* * *

 _ **Drawing Power**_

Movement in his peripheral vision caused Rossi to look up from his desk. Jennifer Jareau stood hesitantly in his doorway. Before he could ask why she was there, she told him.

"I needed to visit the 'W' again."

The heavy Italian brows raised. "What's got you feeling that way? Or...I guess I shouldn't have to ask."

He'd needed to stare at the 'W' himself, of late.

"He wouldn't even see me, Rossi. I went there yesterday, and again today, and they told me he wasn't seeing visitors. I was worried that something had happened to him...something _else_...or that he might be sick or something. So I asked Garcia to do a little spying, and..."

"Be careful with that, my friend. You know they're watching us, for 'undue influence'." Making finger quotes.

"I know. She was sure she could get in and out without being noticed. And she said there's nothing. He's not sick, and he's not...hurt...again, thank God."

Still having trouble processing what he'd already been through.

"And it doesn't look like he's on any special kind of restriction or anything. He just won't come down. He won't see anyone. And it scares me, even more than the beating did."

It was the thing she'd been most frightened of. Not that he would go inside himself, as he always did when life presented him a setback. But the scope of this particular setback, and the unrelenting string of additional setbacks that followed, threatened to send him so far inside that he wouldn't be able to find his way back out. More recently, after everything that had happened, she worried that he would lose the will to try.

Rossi pushed back from his desk and came around it to stand next to her.

"He's been through a significant trauma, and I don't mean the physical one. Having that other young man lose his life..." Rossi sighed, and then continued. "You know him better than anyone...when has he ever _not_ taken on the burden of responsibility for something that's gone wrong? I've known him for a decade now, and I've never once heard him say, 'It's not my fault'."

"I know. Sometimes I think he thinks he's Atlas. But I've always been able to support him before...or at least I could try to. This time...he's all alone in there, and now he's cutting himself off. He won't even see me!"

She'd tried to plead her case with the visitor monitor, but was told that nothing could be done.

"They're _allowed_ to have visitors, Miss. But they're not _forced_ to."

So she'd folded up the new picture Henry had drawn, onto which she'd stamped Michael's hand print, and trudged back to the visitor parking lot, her mind swirling with recriminations.

 _Have I come on too strong? Do I remind him too much of what he's missing?_

Every time she'd come, it had been with news of his mother. And, no matter Diana's true cognitive state, JJ had always tried to paint it in the best possible light. If Diana had had a bad day the day before, JJ mentioned the one three days prior, when she'd been good.

 _Have I oversold it? Does he think she's okay without him? Does he think he can let go, now?_

But she knew how he would be if she told him the truth every time she saw him. Diana was still up and down, sometimes stringing a couple of 'up' days in a row, but more often putting together a run of 'down' days. Technically, she was pretty similar to how she'd been when he'd been imprisoned thirty-nine days ago. But, really, JJ was certain she was seeing a trend toward deterioration.

 _Of course there would be. What mother wouldn't wither without the love of her son?_

Reid had sent Diana letters, in the beginning, when he'd thought his incarceration would be a temporary situation. But the letters had become more widely spaced in time, and there had been only one in the past two weeks.

 _What is he going to say? 'Wish you were here?'_

But there had been that one letter, received by Diana just a few days ago. JJ had been itching to read it during her visit to Reid's apartment the following day. But It hadn't been a good day, maybe _because_ of the letter. Diana had been agitated, and had met her at the door with a question.

"Where is Spencer going?"

"Going?" Wondering if Reid had built on her premise that he was at the beach.

"Yes, 'going'! He says he has to go somewhere and he doesn't know when he'll get back! Where is he going?" Waving the piece of plain paper in the air.

At first, JJ had taken it concretely. He'd already had one abrupt and unexpected move to Millburn. Was he being moved again? What if he was moved so far that they couldn't manage to visit him as much as they had been?

She'd held out her hand and Diana had grudgingly turned over the letter. It was short, and uninformative, as she suspected most of his prison letters had been. All it said was:

 _"Hi Mom, I don't have much time to write today. Sorry that it's been a while. I just wanted to let you know that...well, it might be another long while before you hear from me again. But, don't worry, please. It's just that I don't think I'll be able to write, because I have to go somewhere. Please tell JJ if you need anything, and she'll take care of it. And please listen to her, too. Any time I haven't followed her advice, I've wished I had. She'll look out for you. I love you, Mom."_

But it hadn't been uninformative to JJ, who was all too familiar with reading between the lines of her best friend.

 _He's saying goodbye. He's asking her to accept me, because she won't have him._

Which was why she'd made two trips in a row to see him. And he'd refused her visit each time. She told Rossi about the letter, ending with her interpretation of it.

"He doesn't think he'll get out. Not intact, anyway."

Rossi misunderstood. "He's thinking they'll come after him now? Or is he saying they've found out he's a fed?"

They'd all become aware that Reid seemed to have a champion among the inmates, even if he didn't seem to have one in the prison system itself. He still hadn't been moved to protective custody, and it seemed like a race against time before his status as a federal agent became widely known, and put him in danger.

JJ shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe. But that's not what I think the letter was about."

"Explain to the old man, please."

She smiled an apology at having been cryptic.

"Remember that day..." _That awful, awful day_. "...when we found out he'd been moved to the prison, and Garcia insisted we all write those letters?"

Rossi nodded. He'd struggled, both with the news, and with the task.

"Well... I told him to do anything he had to do to survive. That all I wanted was for him to come home, and he should do whatever he had to do to make that happen. . Even if it meant..."

Her voice trailing off.

"Even if it meant what?"

JJ stepped over to the window of Rossi's office and stared out of it.

"You know how he gets really quiet sometimes?"

Rossi nodded. In the early years of his return to the team, he'd found some of those episodes to be blissful, a reprieve from the usual string of obscure facts. But, in time, he'd come to suspect that Reid's silences weren't all the same. JJ's words confirmed that suspicion.

"Sometimes he's just thinking about a case. But sometimes...especially when he's upset...he just ...he goes inside. He withdraws. He's had such a hard life, Rossi, with his mother's illness and his dad just leaving them like that. And his giftedness…..it was also a bit of a curse, when he was a kid. He didn't fit in anywhere, and it turned him into an outcast. I think he learned that the only person he could trust… _really_ trust…was himself. So when he's dealing with something….he goes inside. And sometimes it takes him a while to come out again."

Rossi nodded again. "Like he did with Gideon."

"And Maeve," she added. "He wouldn't see me that time, either."

"Some people grieve better alone."

She turned to face him now. "I know that. I'm pretty much a member of the same club. But it's different with Spence."

"How?"

"Well, for one thing, he's alone. I know, it sounds crazy, right? If you're going to grieve alone anyway, what difference does it make? But I'm surrounded by my family. They don't _let_ me get lost. Eventually, they force me to come out. But Spence..."

"Has no one. Or, better said, he's always had _you_ to draw him out. Until now. I get it."

"It took us a long time to get there, but I think….God, I _hope_ ….I showed him that he can trust me, that he doesn't always have to go it alone. It's not good for him, and he knows that. But it's an old habit that he's found hard to break, and I'm worried that he's fallen into it again. You know, I gave him his space about Maeve, when he needed it. But, if it had gone on for too much longer, I was prepared to break down his door. What can I break down now?"

"It sounds like the door you would have to break through now is internal."

"And locked away….both literally and figuratively." She shook her head in a gesture of regret. "I told him to do whatever it took, even if it meant getting lost inside that mind of his. After all, he's got whole books in there, and virtually an encyclopedia worth of knowledge. But he's also got some dark places, places that scare him. They scare me, too, to be honest. And I'm afraid he's already wandering around in them. I'm such a fool...I thought I could lead him out, if he needed me to. It never even occurred to me that he might not let me."

Rossi could see how upset she was, which triggered a thought.

"Maybe he's protecting you."

"Me? Why?"

"Think about it. He's gone off to a dark place….two dark places, really. The prison, and wherever he is in his head. He knows you'll want to be there with him. But he knows how bad it is. He knows what it's doing to him, and he doesn't want you near it."

JJ thought about it a minute. "When I went to visit him that first time, he told me how glad he was to see me, and then, in the next breath, he told me that I shouldn't be there, that it wasn't a good idea."

 _And that he didn't want the rest of those men looking at me. My protective knight._

Rossi nodded. "He's just trying to look out for you."

JJ shook her head. "Like I told him, I don't need looking out for. I'm a big girl, and I've been in prisons before _."_

 _I've even been to some of those dark spaces in Spence's mind, when he's let me_.

"No one needs to protect me. And, if that's what he thinks he's doing, he's got another think coming."

Resolved, she moved away from the window, and toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to Millburn. He might not want to see me, but he'll read a letter. I'm going to hand deliver it. And then, I'm going to wait."

Rossi stood at the entrance to his office and watched as she bounded down the steps to the bullpen.

 _Who knew salvation came dressed in a pencil skirt?_

* * *

 _Helpless. I am literally helpless. I am the embodiment of helplessness._

 _I can't help anyone. Not myself, not Luis, not my mother, not JJ, taking care of her. Not the team, not the people they're trying to save._

 _And I am without help. There is literally no one who can help me. The team has had its hands tied, my attorney hasn't been able to change a single thing. Shaw isn't my friend, he's my enemy, made more so by his attempts at deception. The guards don't think twice about turning their heads, when it suits them. And Luis…..I'm so sorry, Luis…sorry….sorry.._

 _I feel broken. Nightmares have robbed me of my sleep, and sleeplessness has robbed me of my intelligence. I can't think. Can't process. Can't plan. Don't need to plan. There is nothing to be done, anyway._

 _The only thing I can feel is terror. And I'm even letting go of that. If I can't help myself, and there is no one to help me, why fight it? I've already done things I thought I would never do, made choices I thought I could never make. Why care any more? Why try any more?_

 _Hopeless. I am literally hopeless. I am the embodiment of hopelessness._

* * *

The guard called the list of inmates for visiting hours, Reid's name among them.

"I don't want to see anyone." Not even asking who it was.

Another inmate remarked, "Hey, if it's that hot blonde, I'll take her."

Reid flashed eyes in his direction, but he said nothing. Saying things just brought consequences. He was tired of consequences. Risking consequences was for people who still had hope of something better to come.

"Tell her..or him…that I don't want any more visitors."

The guard pulled an envelope from his pocket. "It's a 'her'. The same 'her' as the past two days. I guess she thought you'd say that. So she gave me this, to give to you."

He almost refused it. But some remnant of Spencer Reid related too strongly to Jennifer Jareau, and his arm raised, seemingly of its own volition. He took the envelope from the guard.

"You gonna open that,or not?" asked one of the other inmates.

Reid simply turned and moved back into his cell, and sat on his bunk, fingering this fragile connection to the life he'd once led. He continued to do so until the others had filed out to the visitor room. Paradoxically, visiting hours were the only time he could be assured of being left alone.

Once the others had gone, he stared at the envelope. It had been left unsealed, a physical reminder that there was no longer any aspect of his life get that would remain private. He was certain that the guard had already familiarized himself with its contents, which made it seem somehow tainted. And it maddened him that anything to do with JJ, any part of his relationship with her, should ever become so.

He lifted the flap of the envelope and drew out the single sheet of paper lodged within. As he unfolded it, and spied the familiar handwriting, he felt that achingly familiar tugging in his chest. It had become dampened in the time he'd been at Millburn. In the beginning, as much as it had hurt, he'd held on to it, held on to whatever connection he could to the people he'd loved and who'd loved him. But fading hope had spawned despair, which had begun to wrest away from him the memory of love, the reason to hold on, the purpose in the pain. Now, just now, holding the letter she'd penned only moments ago, the memory revived. And he tried desperately to shut it down once again, before it could bring hope along with it.

His brain brought forth the argument of logic: J _ust tear it up, before you give in. Let her go, completely, before you both end up in some neverending cycle of hope and regret. Send her away._

His hands began to fold the letter closed once again, in obedience to his mind. But they'd become less nimble in the past few weeks, and they weren't quite quick enough. Before he could complete the task, his hands began responding to a new master. The ember of love had been nearly extinguished, but thi contact, meager as it was, had fanned it back into flame. His heart was in charge now.

He opened the page to its full length, and began to read.

 _Spence,_

 _Please God, I hope you're reading this. Please read this, Spence. Even if you won't see me, please read this._

 _I'd be a fool to say that I know what this has been like for you, and you'd be right to call me one. I don't know. I can only imagine how you must feel….and believe me, I imagine it all the time. You are never far from my thoughts, nor from my heart. Rossi says you're trying to protect me by not seeing me. He thinks you don't want me to see what this is doing to you. But, Spence, I see it in my mind every day, and in my dreams, every night. There's nothing you could say, or do, or look like, that would frighten me as much as not being able to see you frightens me._

 _I'm so afraid that you're losing hope. That you can't see a way out, or maybe that you've lost touch with the reasons why you should hold on. So I'm going to ask you to do something._

 _Rossi says you've been keeping a journal. That means you have paper and something to write with. And you still have an eidetic memory. So, what I want to ask you to do is this: You remember that drawing Henry made for you? The one from that day we went to the park? I want you to draw it in your journal. Draw it exactly as you remember it, exactly as Henry meant for you to see it. And then I want you to hold on to that….to the memory of that day, to knowing it meant so much to Henry that he drew it for you….I want you to hold on to it. I want you to look at it, every single day, and I want you to remember. I want you to feel connected. There's a little boy that loves you very much, who remembers who you are, even if you can't do the same right now. I want you to look at that picture every day, and remember him. Remember how much you love him, and how much he loves you. And, if you don't mind….remember how much his mother loves you, too._

 _Can you do that for me? Can you promise to remember? Can you promise to try?_

 _I know I told you to do what you had to. But, please, Spence. You don't have to let go of me. That was never part of the bargain. I'm going to come back here, as many days as I can, until the day comes when you walk into that room. And then I'm coming again, every day after that. Please, Spence. Love is stronger than hate, or fear, or shame, or despair. Whatever has happened, or whatever you're thinking….. love will overcome it. Please, just let it in. Let me in._

 _I love you, Spencer Reid. BFF. I refuse to give up on you. And you know how I am when I_ _know I'm right. You may as well just give it up now._

Reid let the letter fall to his lap as he ran his hands through his prison-unruly mop of hair. A huge part of him was too exhausted…..emotionally, physically, spiritually. It just wanted to give up, and go along to get along, to let whatever was to happen to him, happen. No matter JJ's emotional plea, he had far too little energy to respond to it.

But there was a kernel. A little nibbet of something, deep within, that he could feel responding to her words. And something else. Something he'd read, once, about a time when much of the world seemed to be living in darkness. The people of that time could not be assured of the coming light, and still, they'd held fast.

Reid pulled his journal out from under his pillow, and wrote down the words, just as he'd remembered them.

 _Elie Weisel said, "Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."_

Some remnant of the old Spencer Reid realized he'd been holding hope in his hands, in the form of JJ's letter, hope returned to him by another human being. It moved him to close his eyes for a full minute. Then, ready, he turned the page of his journal to find a fresh one, and he began to draw.

When he was done, he held the book at arms' length and inspected his work. It was true to the depiction Henry had made of the day. Birds flew in the sky, the sun shone brightly. He and Henry walked along, hand in hand. But it wasn't quite right. It hadn't quite captured the day. It was missing something.

So Reid picked up his pencil once again, and resumed sketching. She hadn't been in Henry's crayon artwork. But, when it was finished, she was there in Spencer Reid's. Long blonde hair blowing in the breeze, a smile in her eyes, and on her face... _Hope_ , pushing a baby in a stroller.

He could hear movement in the hallway, telling him that visitor's hours were over. It didn't really matter. He wasn't ready to see her anyway. Wasn't sure he would ever see her again. Wasn't sure he was worthy of a society other than the one he was in.

But he could do as she asked. He could look, every day...for the rest of his life, if need be...at the memory of love, and life, and hope. And maybe, just maybe, one day, it would all take wing.


End file.
